


Death Eater Dogma

by HeirGaunt



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Death Eaters, F/M, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27535036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeirGaunt/pseuds/HeirGaunt
Summary: A snapshot in the life of Anastasia Greengrass, Death Eater.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Death Eater Dogma

At her side, Anastasia Greengrass carried a smallsword. An expensive affair, its hilt was inlaid with dainty, curling, leaves and branches. It was a wedding gift from her mother, but it was far older than that. Passed down from generation to generation, it had been a strangely peaceable weapon of death. Until the Eaters of Death.

Oppressive as the sword was at her side, it was linked, in turn, to the letters. Letters she carried every day, with the same necessity as her sword. Letters from her daughters. Written on parchment paper in gall ink, they were signed “Love”. Astoria’s letters discussed arithmancy. The magic of numbers, theory behind the great art of magic. Briefly, Astoria would discuss school, before retreating, filling the page with algebraic notation. Daphne’s letters were more personable. Small details and anecdotes, carefully saying nothing that mattered (Oh, but didn’t everything matter?), Ciara Walsh’s cracked wand, Gregory Goyle's moronic attempt to summon a brick (putting him in the hospital wing, or the disappearance of Harry Potter.

When she had time, time in between the mad training, between barking commands, between setting wards, she read the letters. With the mind numbing task of the paperwork of an army, she’d wonder about what the letters really meant. As she fell asleep, her heart broke under the truth. Her daughters, no matter how much she pretended, did not love her.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Tea, pain-potions, calming drafts, pocket-watches, tobacco, pipes, gold galleons, silver sickles, bronze knuts, spare wands, portkeys, and backup portkeys. Together, these weighed between five and ten pounds depending on a (wo)mans habits, pressing down like the weight of curses and enchantments not mixing (They learned that after Cuthbert Mipps got smart and turned himself inside out when his undetectable extension charm was hit with a killing curse). Ailpean Dobbins had carried extra calming drafts, two ounces each, because he hadn’t stood the sight of blood. Arthur Wheatley carried a black weatherbeaten diary. Norman Price carried a deluminator. Because you could die so easily, the carried enchanted bandages, that stopped the bleeding of all but the darkest of wounds (and there were many). By Necessity, and because it was standard procedure, they wore the white masks of death. Silver, that covered the full face, an enchanted second skin, stealing all traces of individuality. Except for Anastasia’s. Her’s didn’t cover the full face, leaving her chin, and jaw open below the lips. A tangible reminder of who she was.

They were called Death Eaters.

Masks white, robes black, they moved in darkness. Apparating straight up, above the wards of Britain into the cold black sky, the lost illusions of death. The constant, rhythmical apparition and fall, the constant, dreadful falling, as they’d make their way in undetected boredom towards their enemies.

What they carried was partially a function of memory. They all carried pictures. Faintly animated photographs in black and white. The one she carried captured a moment in time, from the summer of ‘94. It was summer, the war nothing but the nightmares that haunted her sleep. It showed Cyril, in the black robes of a barrister, a smile on his face. Her daughters were to the side, Daphne in a light blue summer dress, while Astoria, in pink, stared vacantly at something not quite in frame. A perfect day, she had almost told them how much they meant to her, before handing them off to the governess, and leaving. She had almost waited. Almost, but then, it was the McMillans. One did not anger the McMillans.

Often in the line of duty, they’d spend days in woods. Tracing the faint line that was the magic of leylines. Tracing them, to the homes of their enemies, the collaborators, the mudbloods. Observing. Lying in wait, they’d learn. And once they had learned everything that could reasonably be learned, they struck.

Executions. Conjured snakes, crushing, beheading. Dropping from 10,000 feet above their home, their back ripped open and their lungs ripped through their back, boiled to death, turning their relatives into inferi and having them torn apart at the hands of their loved ones, flaying alive, there were many ways to kill a man, woman, child, infant, or family. They left the bodies, a message and a reminder, that they were the agents of death, the Death Eaters.

They’d begin an assault when Wheatley dropped his four pebbles, each inscribed with runes that pulsated with power. One for each cardinal direction. Dobbins would wave his staff at the wards, bringing the twisted tortured magic of the unseen world to light. Price would stay with Wheatley, covering him as he set up the counterwards that prevented escape, while she, Anastasia Greengrass stood watch over Dobbins.

Concealed by muggle forestry, they had found a muggleborn family. No road or path lead to the house. On Christmas day, they attacked. Dobbins brought the wards down in thirty three seconds, smiling and bowing as an actor after a performance. A flash in the window. An unholy conflagration of red light. He crumpled, folding over, a puppet with cut strings, red lifeblood steaming in the snow.

It wasn’t her. Not her real self, Anastasia Greengrass but the homunculus of her rage, tearless bitterness, not at the muggleborns, but herself. Of the failure that created Anastasia Greengrass of the Inner circle. Hatred that blinded, stole her memory, her body, causing her to awake over the defiled corpse of a woman, lungs ripped through her back, dragged kicking and screaming to the snow, to her death. An infant pierced through the heart it’s blood on her sword, silent witness to her madness.

At noon, after burning Dobbins’s corpse in front of the house, the house where the muggleborns had lived, she read the letter Daphne had sent, detailing why she hadn’t returned home (an empty home was worse than an empty school… there’s only so many times one can talk to the house elves…). Her eyes, cold, and hard, for an instant, had glistened with tears. For the first time, there was no comfort in the letter for her dead heart.

Mocking Dobbins they laughed. Blown by mud, they said, mocking death, mocking the idea of being weak in front of their fellow cronies, not because they didn’t respect Dobbins, but for a simple reason, a simple fear. The fear of losing the respect of their fellows. The fear of blushing, the fear that had them marching in lockstep to their deaths.

That night, the night after Dobbins died, she closed herself off in her room. Cut off, from Arthur laughing, describing how Dobbins was blown while bowing (together with a crass imitation of how he crumpled to the ground). It was in her room, in her sanctum, she knew the truth. There was no such thing as Anastasia Greengrass the loving mother. She had been saying the lines, and dancing the dance, play acting for so long, that part within her soul was dead. In her soul, the clock struck midnight. She cast the letters in the fire. The fire destroyed what her feeble mind could not. It cleansed the destruction of a good person (had she ever thought otherwise?). She wasn’t a good person, good mother, not anymore. And no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t be able to bring Dobbins back.

Yet the rain without, the crackling fire within, the clock on the wall screamed out, remember. Remember who you are. Remember who you were born to be. Telling her, exhorting her, the very voice of her ancestors made real within her mind. Do not go gentle into this good night!

Running from Voldemort would leave her dead. It could be quick, her wand, the same self-loathing that killed mudbloods, a silent crumple, and she would be dead. Gone. Free, free to her penance in the fires of damnation. Perhaps with her gone, Daphne and Astoria would be free of a mother that failed them. Perhaps without her, they could do better, away from the hateful division between the purebloods and muggleborns and all those in between.

But Anastasia Greengrass was afraid, though she laughed in the face of death. Anastasia Greengrass was afraid, and murdered and tortured and raped. Anastasia Greengrass was a coward, just too cowardly to die.

**Author's Note:**

> Critical feedback welcome. However, please be specific (e.g point to a scentance/paragraph and explicitly state what needs fixing).
> 
> This fic was inspired by the short story "The things they carried" by Tim O'Brian.


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